Tuesday, October 30, 2007

My Word!

Well, there may be others, but "selfphone" (or "selfone"?) is one word for which I am a proud parent. I'm not sure how to do a DNA test to ensure that someone else wasn't begatting this word when I thought I was. But I'd never heard (or read) it when it occurred to me that these devices were personal, no families were leaving one in the hallway for everyone to share instead of "land line" phones -- they were phones for one's self (whether the technology was cellular or not).

Then a day or two ago, I encountered an interesting alternative: "persophone". It seems to be used (on AlGore and the Ythm's Internet) more than ten times more often than "selfphone" is. It is a syllable longer and doesn't play phonetically with "cell phone", but if tip comes to tip ("tipping point" revision of "push comes to shove"), I suppose I could adopt it.

Appendices

The search results on the basis of which the claim that persophone was used much more often than selfphone were based:

About Me

Why uwwoonp.?

In response to criticism for ending a sentence with a preposition (the part of speech), Winston Churchill replied "This is the sort of pedantry up with which I cannot put." I think there are plenty of things Up With Which One Ought Not Put, and maybe pointing some of them out will help (or at least make me feel better).